Complaints - How we're doing

Complaints are of huge importance to us as they show us where we’re not meeting our customers’ expectations. Our latest complaints performance for the fourth quarter of 2014 covers the period 1 October to 31 December. It includes British Gas and me (mobile energy) performance and that of our partnership brand Sainsbury’s Energy.[1]

How we're performing

Previous

The number of complaints we received

Commentary:

During Q4 2014, we’ve seen a 3.6% increase in our complaint received volume compared to the previous quarter.

We’re constantly working really hard to fix the issues driving complaints, with the majority of our complaints falling into five key categories. You can read further detail below on what our top fivecomplaint types are, and what we’re doing to address these areas.

The number of complaints we resolved

Commentary:

Resolved volumes are based on the total complaints resolved in the reporting quarter. During Q4 2014 we resolved 2,869 complaints per 100,000 customer accounts.

% of complaints we resolved on the same day or the next working day

Commentary:

We’ve seen a slight decline in the percentage of complaints resolved on the same or next working day, with 75.3% of our complaints resolved within 1 working day during Q4 2014. Where we’ve not been able to resolve a complaint by the end of the next working day, it’s often because we need to investigate the complaint in more detail.

% of complaints we resolved within 8 weeks

Commentary:

During Q4 2014 we resolved 94% of complaints within 8 weeks. Where we’ve not been able to resolve a complaint within 8 weeks, it’s often because we need more information from a third party.

Complaints that have been accepted by the Ombudsman Services: Energy

Commentary:

The Ombudsman Services: Energy will accept a complaint if our customer’s issue remains unresolved after 8 weeks, or where a deadlock letter has been sent.

During Q4 2014 we received 668 Ombudsman complaints. Our Ombudsman volumes in Q4 2014 represent just 5.7% of the residential customer complaints accepted by the Ombudsman, against a British Gas Residential market share of around 30%.

We continue to work alongside the Ombudsman Services: Energy to gain more insight and understand why customers escalate their complaints to them, as well as ensuring our internal policies and procedures are improving to reduce the need for escalation to a third party.

Next

Top five complaint reasons and plans to address

Top five complaint reasons

As a percentage of the total complaints received

Q4 2013

Q1 2014

Q2 2014

Q3 2014

Q4 2014

Payments

19%

23%

21%

22%

25%

Billing

18%

23%

27%

26%

22%

Customer Service[3]

21%

17%

16%

16%

16%

Metering

10%

10%

8%

9%

10%

Communication

-

-

7%

7%

7%

Payments

There are a number of things that can affect the volume of payment related complaints we receive which include seasonality, tariff changes and explanation of payment plans. We’re making it a priority to do everything we can to make our customers lives a little simpler in this area.

What we’ve delivered:

We’ve changed the way we refund our customers who have a monthly payment plan with us to ensure that any credit on their account greater than £5 is returned to them following their 12 month review.

In Q4 2014 alone, we reviewed over 3.2 million payment plans to ensure our customers are paying the right amount for the energy they’re using.

In order to support our customers who pay for their energy using a prepayment meter, we’ve made improvements to proactively get in touch with them. This has helped to ensure that some of our most vulnerable customers are able to manage their outstanding debts.

As it’s a key priority for us, we’ve continued to work closely with the Energy Trust team to ensure that extra support is given to our customers who need it most.

Further actions we're taking

We’re continuing to make sure our prepayment customers don’t unknowingly build up a debt on their meter through their daily standing charge, by contacting customers who we identify have not purchased any credit for a set period.

Where we’ve installed a new prepayment meter, we’re contacting some of our more vulnerable customers to support them with managing their consumption and making payments.

We continue to improve the way in which we explain payment plans to our customers.

Billing

Getting our billing right is crucial as it touches all of our customers at some point in their journey with us. Delivering on our promises and sending accurate and timely bills is really important. We’re continuing to review the reasons behind why our customers complain so we can ensure a seamless billing experience.

What we’ve delivered:

We’ve reduced the number of estimated bills we send each month by improving our meter reading processes and as a result, customers are receiving more accurate bills.

We’ve been able to prompt more customers to submit their own meter readings, another initiative in our drive to provide our customers with an accurate bill first time.

We’re proud to continue to lead the industry with the installation of smart meters in our customers’ homes, with more than 121,500 smart meters installed during Q4 2014 and more than 390,000 installed in 2014.

Further actions we're taking

We’re challenging ourselves to think of new ways to improve our customers’ billing experience, to increase the number of accurate, timely bills we send.

We’re reviewing our customer journeys, which will enable us to identify where things go wrong and subsequently make the improvements required to ensure our billing experience runs as smoothly as possible.

The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is an initiative that we’re continuing to support and we’ve already invested hundreds of millions of pounds in free or subsidised loft and cavity wall insulation for people who need it most. You don’t have to be a British Gas customer to apply, so check online to see if you could benefit or call 0800 107 7793.

Customer Service

We’re continuing to prioritise and focus on initiatives to ensure we get things right for our customer first time, as we know that occasionally we can get things wrong and our customers don’t receive the level of service they expect.

What we’ve delivered:·

We are proactively contacting many of our customers each week to ask them directly about the end to end experiences that they have with British Gas. We’re using this Customer feedback to understand how we can make their experiences better and to track the impact of the improvements we are making.

Being there for our customers is important to us, so we’ve reviewed the working schedules for all of our call centre teams to ensure they’re there for our customers when they need us most.

We’ve increased the availability of webchat as a channel for our customers to interact with us if they wish to and more customers are now choosing this channel as a way to interact with us.

Further actions we're taking

We’ve doubled the size of our root cause analysis team to continue focusing on the reasons our customers complain and what we can do to prevent these events from occurring.

We’re investing time in our frontline people and managers by providing on-going training to ensure our customers are treated fairly.

We’re trialling initiatives to get back in touch with customers who’ve left feedback when things haven’t gone as well as we would have liked, and we’re taking steps to ensure we put them right.

Metering

We’re working hard to identify and resolve some of the issues that may occur as a result of meter faults and meter exchanges, as we know that these drive complaints in this area.

What we’ve delivered:

We’ve developed a customer service programme to focus and drive improvements which includes ensuring that jobs are being booked correctly and are completed on the first visit.

We’ve introduced a pro-active approach to contacting customers who’ve indicated that their recent interactions with us haven’t run as smoothly as they’d have liked.

We’ve improved communication to our customers who are in the process of having a smart meter fitted to ensure they have relevant information to hand regarding their appointment, what to expect on the day and the benefits of having a smart meter installed.

Further actions we're taking

We’re continuing to review our smart meter installation programme and introduce efficiencies to improve the number of successful smart meter installations that take place.

We’re continuing to look at the key drivers of complaints within the metering world and are ensuring that actions and results are being tracked.

Communication

Communicating effectively with our customers is important to us

We’re continually reviewing all of the correspondence we send to our customers to ensure that the information provided is accurate, clear and timely.

What we’ve delivered:

Where we’ve been unable to deliver an email to a customer, and their preferred contact method is email, we’re writing to customers to ask them to update their email details to ensure we can communicate with them through their chosen channel.

We’ve made improvements to our bill design and the messages we deliver to ensure that the reasons behind any changes we make are clear and transparent.

Further actions we're taking

We’re continually reviewing our communications to our customers to ensure that we explain things in a straight forward and easy to understand way.

We’re continuing to review our reassessment process to look at new ways to proactively manage our customers’ experiences. Such initiatives include: providing a personal projection plan to enable our customers to calculate their consumption; increasing the accuracy of payments; and calling our customers to explain any changes in advance. We’re also keeping our bill messages up to date and using online personal videos to support our customers.

We’re reviewing the processes we follow for issuing bills to ensure that they reach our customers in a timely manner.

Annual Consumer Complaint Report

View our Annual Consumer Complaint Report, which details how we’ve performed in relation to the number of complaints we weren’t able to resolve on the same, or next working day.

For the reporting period 1st October 2013 to 30th September 2014 this figure was 368,057.

[1] Sainsbury's Energy is supplied in partnership with British Gas (part of British Gas Trading Limited).

[2] Previously reported volumes have been amended retrospectively by the Ombudsman Services: Energy following re-categorisation after investigation.

[3] Customer Service complaints have been re-categorised from Q4 2013. Increasing our Q4 2013 volume in this category by approx. 43,000 and Q1 2014 by approx. 36,000. Volumes prior to Q4 2013 have not been retrospectively adjusted.

Complaints
received

Received per
100k customer accounts

Complaints
resolved

Resolved per
100k customer accounts

% resolved
same or next working day

% resolved
within 8 weeks

Q1 2012

437,124

2,778

435,779

2,770

79.4%

95.7%

Q2 2012

352,882

2,249

356,262

2,271

78.3%

96.5%

Q3 2012

323,191

2,064

322,869

2,062

79.0%

95.3%

Q4 2012

355,998

2,285

359,494

2,308

79.2%

96.3%

Q1 2013

357,887

2,295

354,456

2,273

78.7%

95.9%

Q2 2013

264,928

1,696

264,186

1,691

72.1%

93.9%

Q3 2013

247,000

1,582

244,819

1,568

71.6%

93.8%

Q4 2013

365,735

2,412

363, 511

2,397

75.9%

96.3%

Q1 2014

462,334

3,084

461,421

3,078

79.5%

96.2%

Q2 2014

426,517

2,844

428,992

2,860

78.4%

95.6%

Q3 2014

405,556

2,725

403,809

2,713

77.3%

94.3%

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